Free Beautiful Misery (Miss Misery) by Tracey Martin Page A

framed me for murder. Since then, it was like my magical nerve-endings had burnt out. The jealousy the harpies inspired? The lust the satyrs aroused? I didn’t feel it anymore. I was blessedly immune.
    Except with Lucen.
    Buried deep in my heart I’d always harbored a secret fear—that the reason I felt Lucen’s magic more strongly than any other satyr’s magic was because I longed for him for more reasons that just his power. Now that fear had been confirmed.
    Surely, he’d sensed that fear along with my arousal as he’d held me, one hand on my hip, the other tucking strands of hair behind my ear. His lips were so close to me that I could have sworn I felt them brush over my skin as he spoke. “Please, stay tonight, Jess. Don’t leave yet.”
    It had taken ten years to get this far . Ten years of occasional visits because I’d been too scared to hang out in his presence any longer than that. Ten years of him never touching me simply because I’d asked him not to.
    Then came one week during which I’d been framed for murder. One week of him sheltering me from enemies I hadn’t known about, proving multiple times that he would fight for me, whether it was challenging the satyr hierarchy or literally putting his life at risk to protect mine.
    No surprise I’d broken, just as surely as some of those humans in the bar were breaking. Only it wasn’t just my ability to resist the physical cravings that collapsed. The walls I’d built around my heart had cracked too, and the cracks deepened every time he touched me. To let him do more than touch my hand, my arm, my waist—surely, that would make them crumble entirely.
    And I wanted him to do it anyway. God, I wanted it like a starving woman wanted food. A desperate pain that consumed all other thoughts.
    There was no question that he wanted to satisfy that need. That was the truly scary part. He couldn’t hurt me magically, but he could still hurt me. Emotionally. He cared about me, that much was clear. He’d risked his life for me. But what did caring mean to someone who wasn’t human? I cared about him, too, and I feared caring about him more than he was capable of doing in return.
    W hat kind of person made themselves emotionally vulnerable to a satyr? A crazy one, obviously.
    But it was crazy a long time waiting. Lucen had been very, very patient. Something he certainly wouldn’t be used to.
    I swirled the dregs of the wine around in my glass. I needed to grow a pair of ovaries. Woman up. Risk it all. Bare everything and see it through.
    So I stayed, drifting off to sleep occasionally over the next couple hours. Music and muffled voices from the bar drifted up through the floorboards. In the corner, Lucen’s pet dragon snored softly. And on the couch, I rested my eyes and my body, which was badly battered and beaten from the same fight that had fried my ability to sense magic.
    Although it hurt, my body had no trouble responding to the thoughts that danced through my head as I lay there. Ten years of imagining what it would be like to touch every inch of Lucen. Wondering if all those whispered musings about satyrs were true. And if, when my naked body was wrapped around his, when our slick skin was entwined so tightly that I didn’t know where he ended and I began, if when I felt him buried deep inside me at last, would I still care that he wasn’t human?
    I stirred back to wakefulness by Lucen tracing a finger down my jaw line. It was easy to tell it was him. The distinctive scent of his cinnamon satyr’s pheromones played havoc on my senses, and his touch… Burnt-out as I seemed to be on pred magic, his touch still roused me to more than wakefulness. I could feel that sensation not just on my face but singing through every nerve, vibrating through my core and along my arms and legs, and especially straight to my most sensitive areas.
    Smiling, I left my eyes closed, reveling in it. “Are you here to stay or on another break?”
    “ To stay. We’ve